Checklist to Secure Your Website

And here we come again with yet another interesting and learned article about on the security of your website. Not to scare you, but with the latest “DDOS scare” a plethora of websites has been tremendously affected and has undergone huge drift in terms of security and safety. This brings us to a thought to ensure our website’s security at the brim so that no threats reach our websites. For executing this certain precautions are necessary to keep in place all your data and information.

Ideally, in this world, anyone who is running an online business or owns a website right now should think about the security of the website, and this is due to the increasing number of threats the business is getting or facing from hackers.

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These hacking activities are common for the websites who uses or accepts credit card or debit card or payment related information through their websites. Here, while giving your sensitive information via any website you are putting the trust in the hands of the website. If these get available to the hacker your trust hangs on the stake and the reputation of the website gets betrayed.

Cyber security is an intricate stuff and here it is difficult to ward off every threat that is coming from the hackers. However, you can greatly lessen the risk of having your website be the next to be persecuted entity by taking safety precautions.

Ensure to use Sitewide SSL

SSL Certificates are very important and crucial for the website that runs, thus ensuring site-wide SSL is essential for the website's security. The lock sign in the browser address bar states the website you’re browsing on is certainly secure and safe. On the other hand what it really means is that you are presently using an SSL connection that is pretty secure.

To take the full benefit of the SSL certificate and verify encrypted connections, the SSL certificate should be sitewide and compulsory. It should not be a page-to-page alternative that gives just the back and forth encryption and un encryption but it should be available on the SSL.

Data that is transmitted outside the SSL network passes in the form of plain text and can be easily seized by anyone who is willing to put the work in the website. Here the single form with the sensitive information or the password entry on the unencrypted side of the website can easily compromise the whole website. Thus, Sitewide SSL is prudent.

Authenticate the SSL Certificate

No wonder we have to talk about SSL certificate since long and indeed it is essential. But it is also important to note that when is your SSL certificate expiring. What are we trying to tell you is that keep in mind when is your SSL certificate expiring so that you can renew on time to secure all your data on the website and on the server.

A potential SQL injection can also be used to compromise a website. Thus, this also needs to be taken care of with the help of SSL certificate.

Try securing the data with strong passwords and also update regularly

Surprisingly a lot of people use passwords that are very simple in nature for example – "234567". These are very passwords that hackers can easily steal or crack the code. So please don’t use these simple passwords. Make sure you strong password combination such as – a mix of letters, numbers, special characters etc.

It is also advisable not to use an easy combination and predictable guesses for the password like – your birth date, Wednesday, anniversary, kid’s name etc. Go little creative and make sure you use a different mix of characters and numbers for the website. Also, avoid using a similar password for all the website log-ins.

For updations, be sure you change the passwords on regular intervals, in fact, you can make set a reminder as well in case you have a habit to forget.

Your software shall be renewed on time and updated

At times we skip updating our software but we all shall make it a regime as it is a mandate to keep your software up to the mark. This simple step makes a lot of difference in terms of security and safety your browsing habit. This is also because a lot of software updates are intended purposely to decrease security vulnerabilities on the websites.

Software designers and cyber security experts always try to combat with the hackers to prevent every single attempt these imposters come up to steal the data.

All the Insecure Cipher Suites shall be disabled

When you have the best encryption options available for your website that does not say that the other options accessible are worse or they don't even exist for you. The majority of the default configurations of the most known web servers still consent to SSL cipher suites which are well thought-out to be insecure, such as RC4.

These should be openly disabled on the web server that is Apache, IIS – so that malicious players cannot force one of these suites and take advantage of it. This is critical not only for the security but for the usability of the website as well. This is because the websites that are permitting the insecure cipher suites will be routinely blocked by the browsers.

HTTP Strict Transport Security should be enabled asap

HTTP Strict Transport Security (Linux, Windows) make certain that the browsers easily and conveniently communicate with a website over the SSL certificate. Non-SSL requests (https://) or insecure requests will be certainly converted to the SSL requests with (https://) robotically.

Any letdown to utilize this method can result in a man-in-the-middle attack, where the hackers could readdress the user to a counterfeit site between the non-SSL and SSL certificate hand-off.

Using HTTP Only Cookies is recommended

HTTP only cookies prevent the access to the harmful cookies so that the client side scripts and the cross-site scripting flaws can't take the benefit of the stored cookies. These protected cookies make sure that the data on your website that gets stored on the visiting systems stays private only and in any manner can't be browbeaten by a fraud.

This should be hundred percent enabled to all the modern browsers that maintain HttpOnly and can offer the extra protection. Important to note that the users with that don’t support this with HTTPOnly will still get traditional cookies.

There are numerous methods and ways by which you can protect your website against threats and hacking attacks, but by following the above-mentioned tips, you can save your website with the possible vulnerabilities. Furthermore, by incorporating these best practices and tips into the development processes and duties, the companies can build a routine of security.

Hi, this is M Nirmal Anandh from the "Temple City", Madurai. I am the Founder of this blog.My profession is, as a CEO in RAAM IT Solutions. It's about E-Publishing, Data Conversion and Data Entry Projects. you can connect with me @, Google+, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

It is a fact that many websites have been tremendously affected and has undergone huge drift in terms of security and safety. And the website’s security is the key element of keeping your website safe from hacker attacks. Thanks for the useful info that will help to keep in place all your data and information.